


Not for One Second Longer

by JeffersonStarships



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, Pining, Self-Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 18:00:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15712251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeffersonStarships/pseuds/JeffersonStarships
Summary: To love as he loved and know as he knew, that no one could love the devil as ceaselessly as he loved Sam… Fewer things could be more painful. Fewer things could be outlived.





	Not for One Second Longer

**Author's Note:**

> Lucifer switches sides, then he falls in love. But I mean, can you really blame him?

Sam had always been so perfect. Flawless in his angel’s eyes. Tall and kind, confusing hazel/blue/brown eyes with a sorta-smile that showed untold shyness, but above all else, warmth. 

In so many ways, Sam was heart stopping.

But his angel’s heart clenched at the sight of him now, and it was like nothing before. A final nail in a cold, hard coffin that he wanted so much to be thawed. But his dear thing was broken. He was beautiful, but he was broken.

There was blood. So much blood. He always ran back to it.

It painted the walls with magnificently gruesome spurts and splatters. It drenched the floor like a wet rug over the worn, unsealed hardwood. It dried on his pale, bare skin and caked in his wild, brown hair where it had smeared and splattered in his rush to devour. It dripped from the corner of his mouth, still open. 

Bodies lay beside him. Around him. Under him. Ripped open and strewn about. Framing him in its horror. If it wasn’t so brutal, and you could look at it as the Devil could; you would see it in all its twisted perfection. 

It was decadence and need. It was taking and fear and anger and wanting. The walls were his proof of his pain, the floor was his despair, he was the husk of man who had taken his fill and had not been filled. He lay with the dead, he lay on the dead. He was no better than those he killed. But he had killed them all the same, because he was hurting, because he was alone. 

This was a still life of a pale angel in the middle of his war, in the middle of his carnage. This was an unholy war brought to earth. Lain down by God, by his children, and by the devil himself. This was life without being alive. This is how monsters are made. In the pit of a man’s- an angel’s- depravity. 

He was too beautiful in this setting to be alive. But his frightened breath rattled in the quiet. His hollow eyes blinked back the guilty tears. His thin frame shivered in pain, in approaching withdrawal. He reached for the man above him as he climbed over the victims, whispered his name through a sob. “Lucifer…”

Alone, the man carried his broken thing from the disintegrating house in the middle of some wayward, backwoods nowhere, into the night air. 

Alone, the man carried him on invisible wings to the only home Sam had left.

Soft words poured from the boy’s mouth, apologies and forgiveness, fear and shame.

“Hush now, Sam,” the angel sighed and held his precious boy close to his chest and searched inside himself for the strength to help him through this. The strength to be his strength. And maybe he would be enough later, but as Sam drifted into unconsciousness, the archangel couldn’t hold on anymore. 

He felt the hot tears come unbidden and hunched against the cold weight of the world as he choked on his sobs. Angels cried for Sam Winchester. An archangel cried the hardest.

This was his fault. Sam’s knocking on the door to death and he nearly pushed him over the edge, shot out his knees and asked him to make it out of the storm alone. 

The angel pushed the pain down, sniffed loudly and held himself up straighter. He needed to be there now, needed to be strong, needed to get his boy home. 

In rustle of wings, Lucifer met Castiel in the bunker’s entry. In another flurry of wings, two angels laid the broken man onto his bed. Sad, red rimmed eyes turned up to his angel, “Please,” his broken voice cried. His face was still covered in blood, and tears track through it. “Please, Lucifer.”

He thought he knew what Sam was asking for, “I’ll help you, Sam.” His hand carefully smoothing the wet hair from his boy’s eyes.

“I need..,” he begged, and Lucifer wanted so bad to give in. He wanted to drain all the demons for him. He wanted to give it to Sam, give him everything he ever asked for and everything he hadn't, every kiss, every touch, every drop of care Lucifer had previously denied himself, but not this. He couldn’t give this. Never this. Never again.

“Sam…” he clenched his teeth and turned to Castiel who looked too sympathetic as he hovered at the door.

Castiel rested his hand on his shoulder, “I’ll tell Dean you found him.” Then it was just the two of them again. 

But it wasn’t how it was, how it had been.

The two of them weren’t just damage things clinging to each other and pretending to be men. They couldn’t be. Not after this. 

Sam’s soul reached for his angel’s grace, but Lucifer didn’t let them touch.

A month ago, he told had Sam he loved him, said it with every fiber of his being, every speck of his grace. Said it a hundred silence ways and he showed him every part of his heart. He held his soul in his grace so soft and gentle and tender and tightly. Things he had never done for anyone else. He wanted him to feel it too. Wanted him to say it back. Wanted him to say it even if it wasn’t true. 

Say it just once. 

Just… say… the… words…

But Sam had just sighed, rolled his eyes and smirked until he realized the devil’s earnestness. Then he just-just pitied him. His eyes went wide and him mouth slack, but Lucifer could see it, feel it. And it hurt more than anything else ever had.

Falling was nothing, being cut off from him brothers, being locked in the cage, dying and rising back up. It was all a breeze compared to the snapping of his lonely heart.

It had taken all his strength not to level the planet in his fury, in his pain, in his sadness.

He ran, saw the universe. He saw every universe. He visited every molecule his father’s favorite plane had to offer. 

It took a month. A month to see everything. A month for Sam to fall. A month for Dean to pray to him, ask him to bring Sam home, tell him Sam needed him. 

The same boy squinted up at the void in the overhead light where Lucifer stood, trying to sort out the ache at seeing the boy who was meant for him, who he loved, who didn’t love him. Sort out the longing and the loneliness and the pain.

“I love you,” Lucifer whispered down at his broken man.

“I killed all those demons,” Sam whispered groggily, “I drank them dry-“ the look on his face was remorse, but mostly fear. Lucifer understood, and he loved him anyway.

“I love you Samuel Winchester.” Lucifer pressed, sitting down beside the only man he ever loved, stroking at his wet, beautiful face. “I walked this earth for you, I walked among the stars for you. I stepped down from heaven for you. I locked all the gates of hell. I have killed all the monsters you had asked of me.”

“Luc-“ Sam tried, his sorrow burst from his soul, pushing and prodding at the devil’s grace, begging for the comfort only an angel- his archangel- could provide. Lucifer pulls his grace away, but he cups Sam’s face with both of his kind hands and presses a gentle kiss at his love’s crown.

“I told you every day that you were made for me,” Lucifer tells him, “I tell you once again that I love you, because when you wake up there will be no demons... Because when you wake up there will be no Lucifer.”

“No,” Sam begs, his numb fingers digging into Lucifer’s shoulder, “Don’t leave me, not again.”

Lucifer hushes him, kisses at the fingers clawing at his arms until they loosen. 

“They will not walk on earth,” he whispers, “They will not walk in the stars, they will not walk in heaven or in hell or in those places in between. When you wake, do not doubt my love. Do not doubt my devotion. Do not pity what I feel because I have felt it for no other. I feel it only for you. For Sam Winchester, I will rid the world of my touch, of the children I tainted, of the taint they left in you -“

“I love you,” Sam begs, and maybe it’s the truth. He doesn’t know, but nearly a month without his angel was enough to drive Sam to demon blood. 

So many times, Lucifer thought he could never love this unforgiving creature. 

But he had fallen so slowly... so fiercely. How was he supposed to know what he was feeling, when he had never felt it before? How was he supposed to make it stop?

Lucifer had been demanding and unrelenting and Sam cared for him, for all that and more. For everything he said, he did, he cared for Lucifer like no one else could. Soothed the grace inside him like no one else could. But he could not love him. 

So small was his voice, when the devil searched his boy’s eyes, “I love you,” was all he could bare. 

And Lucifer feels the tears break from his eyes, because he it is all he can do to keep his voice from breaking. “I can stop this Sam,” Lucifer mumbles and tries to steel himself, he fails, but continues anyway, “I have seen all of my father’s plane and I know now how to save you-“

“Stay-“

“I will save you, my stupid boy.” He kisses his poor, sick creature. 

It is a first… and however devastating… a last.

It is chaste, but fire burns across their mouths in an undeniable force. Heat exploding inside their chests as hot as the earth’s core. No, hotter. 

It burns with the fury of a million suns. 

With all the energy of an archangel unleashed. 

All of his passion, all of his being, burning brighter than even God himself could have foreseen, as all of his emotions brand themselves onto Lucifer’s sleeves. Every drop of his love so painfully evident in just a simple passing of lips. 

Tears spilling over cheeks, hearts pounding at ribs, fingers tightening on anything they could find, a building, blinding pressure screaming behind their eyes.

With a brush of fingers to his forehead, Sam is asleep. And Lucifer gasps for breath as he yanks himself away. His knees giving out on him and he crashes across the room on the floor. His whole body alight with pure, unrelenting, absolute torment. To love as he loved and know as he knew that no one could love the devil as ceaselessly as he loved Sam… Fewer things could be more painful. Fewer things could be outlived.

… Fewer things could explode inside you and light up every corner of your body… 

… Fewer things could show you how much you never got to learn…

Everything in him wanted Sam. Wanted him for all of eternity. Until every planet was little more than dust and the stars rang quiet. 

But what was it for, if it was to be unrequited?

Dean and Castiel burst into the room, “Sam!” Dean yells in unwithheld worry. Lucifer nowhere to be seen.

Whereas Castiel had last seen Sam marred and caked with blood, it is a shock to all his senses to find him clean. To find only a trickle of demon blood where there had been torrents inside him.

But Dean did not see, and thus could not know what the devil has done, is doing right now, for his brother. “Hey Sammy,” Dean coos as Sam’s eyes startle wide and afraid, sad and lonely. “How you feeling?” Dean asks undeterred. “Where’s-“

The noise is sharp and cuts through their bodies quicker than a hot knife through butter, and more than that- the three men feel it. The humans feel it in their souls and the angel feels it in his grace. There was a part of them that Lucifer had claimed as his own. 

He was their friend. 

He was their brother.

He was a part of them, no matter how hard they tried to deny that he was. He was their fears and their saviors. The one they stood against, until he was the one who stood beside them.

And if they could ever bring themselves to let down their walls, maybe they could have loved him. Really, really loved him. 

But he couldn’t give them the chance to reconsider.

The world seems to condense for half a moment, as if the universe had to stop to catch its breath. And maybe it did because on the next instant, the universe seems to be screaming its protest. The very air around them stretching and pulling, knocking those who are standing to their knees as the world twists and screeches and yanks them along.  
There is a sudden dip, and an excruciating tear, as reality is torn down the middle.

None of them were really expecting it. 

None could protect themselves against it even if they did. 

Sam screams, because it feels like he too is being torn apart. 

After all, he was made for the archangel. 

A soul that had never felt itself until now, longed for Lucifer’s grace. Reaching out farther than it ever had dared. Arching and splintering from Sam’s body, desperate and frightened and lonely. His soul hurt like ice. It hurt like fire.

And if Lucifer was still the creature he was born as, he would have taken Sam with him. Then, they would have seen that place an archangel goes when it dies, together. And no matter how much he wants to, Lucifer can no longer bring himself to be so cruel. So, he leaves his broken boy behind.

But he leaves Sam the bit of his soul with his name on it. So, it can be renamed. So, it can be given away again. So, Sam can feel how Lucifer had felt. Full of love that there is little else left to be felt.

And Lucifer dies, crossing through the hole he created through reality, taking with him all the demons left on earth for they can only exist if he does, and letting it stitch itself behind him. Locking everything in hell and throwing away the key that is its master.

A broken, hoarse scream tumbles from Sam’s lips and continues for longer than he thought it could. The demon blood withdrawal passing before his screaming does.

“No no no no,” Sam cries when his voice should be gone. “NO!”

“I should have said it,” these words prevailing passed his tired throat, because if there is even a chance that his angel might hear, then his boy must say it, “I should have said how much I loved you the moment I had you.”

“The moment you let the words arch across the swell of your thoughts, I should have kissed at your fingers, held to your shoulders, brushed at your tears, begged for your forgiveness. I should have had you. I should have you still.”

“Please… come back.”

“Please.”

“ Please… don’t leave me here without you…”

“Not for one second longer…”

But the devil is gone. He is gone and there is little else to be felt, for how ever long the pain wishes to linger. He is gone and there are no distractions. 

He is gone…

**Author's Note:**

> My first story ever published, anywhere. Its terrifying. Leave a kudos if you like it. Comments are also very appreciated. Thanks for stopping by.


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